The Transcript

Here’s How Pat Flynn Grew an Audience of Raving Fans

Voiceover: Welcome to Hack the Entrepreneur, the show which reveals the fears, habits, and inner battles behind big-name entrepreneurs and those on their way to joining them. Now, here’s your host, Jon Nastor.

Jonny Nastor: Hey. Welcome to Hack the Entrepreneur. Thank you so much for stopping by and joining me today. My name is Jon Nastor, but you can call me Jonny. Today’s guest is one of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure to meet; as well, he is a complete serial online entrepreneur.

He began his online journey back in 2008 after getting laid off from his job as an architect, and he has not stopped or looked back since. He is now the host of the wildly successful Smart Passive Income Podcast as well as Ask Pat, and more recently, the 1-Day Business Breakthrough Podcast with Chris Ducker. He’s also started creating and selling software. He speaks around the world. He’s written a book, and he’s currently writing his second one right now.

I want to take a minute to thank our awesome sponsor, FreshBooks, not just for being our amazing sponsor of the show, but also because their support is so damn good. I was trying to get my year-ends done for my accountant, and I’ve realized that my expenses from my bank account can be linked directly to my FreshBooks account, and it’s all automatically done for me. Amazing, right?

I have a software company, as I’ve said. I’m not very technically savvy, so I was doing it completely wrong, but I instantly called them and got on the phone with a real live person who walked me through it in two minutes. It was immediately done, and the report was sent off to my accountant. I just need to thank them because I may have smashed my computer otherwise, and that would have been a very expensive mistake.
Try it absolutely free today at FreshBooks.com/hack, and join over five million users running their businesses hassle-free like I did it today. Be sure to enter ‘Hack the Entrepreneur’ in the ‘How did you hear about us?’ section.

All right. We are back on Hack the Entrepreneur. Today, we have a very special guest. Pat, welcome to the show.

Jonny Nastor: Pat, as an entrepreneur, what is the one thing that you do that you feel has been the biggest contributor to your successes so far?

Pat Flynn: If I had to pick one thing, I think I’m really, really good at seeing what it’s like on the other side. There’s this thing called the ‘curse of knowledge.’ You might have seen this in Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. They talk about this idea where when you know something, it’s hard to know what it’s like not to know something. In other words, it’s hard to teach something that you already know to somebody who doesn’t know anything about it because you can’t imagine what it’s like to not know it anymore.

I feel like I have a great grasp on what it’s like on the other end because I remember what it’s like on the other end. I always talk about stuff that I’ve done myself before so that I can remember what it was like when I first started. People have commented about this before — that I have this way of being able to teach stuff that’s really technical or really difficult or typically over people’s heads in a way that people can understand, and it’s fun and easy to enjoy. I definitely think that’s at least one of my entrepreneur super powers, I guess you could say.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. Do you mean being able to teach people things that you almost forget that you even knew?

Speaking the Customer’s Language

Pat Flynn: Yes. I mean, there are things that I know how to do, and I can do a lot of those things well, but when people try to get into that same thing, it’s a lot more difficult. It’s really easy for me to get somebody to understand those things. It’s funny, because I’m at that point now in my life with my son where he’s starting soccer, and I’m actually his coach this year.

It’s really fun because I played soccer for 25 years growing up, and here I am, teaching somebody who’s completely brand new to it. So I have to break things down and bring it to his level and talk like a five-year-old. That’s really important. As an entrepreneur, you need to talk like your audience. You need to speak in their language.

There was a great quote: “If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they will automatically assume you have the solution.” So it’s really important to get to know who your audience is, but not only that. You need to speak their language too, and I feel like I have a great gasp on how to do that.

Jonny Nastor: Yes. I think I would totally agree. It pulls at my heartstrings to think of soccer coaching a five-year-old because I got to do that with Sadie.

Pat Flynn: Oh yeah.

Jonny Nastor: It’s just hard. She just turned 10, so now, everybody is like, “Oh, they grow up so fast.” I was like, “Yeah, yeah. Sure. Whatever.” And then it’s like, “Ten years old!”

Me and my wife, actually, neither of us felt confident enough that we could teach soccer. I played soccer growing up, but I didn’t think I knew how to teach kids how to play soccer, so she joined with me, and we were the duo coaches, and we did it for three years. It was amazing. I loved it.

Pat Flynn: That’s cool.

Jonny Nastor: It’s so much fun.

There seems to be a time, Pat, in every entrepreneur’s life when they realize one of two things: that either they have this calling to make something big in the world, something bigger than themselves, or they simply can’t work for somebody else. Could you tell us when this happened for you and how you figured it out?

Pat Flynn: Back in 2008, I was laid off from the architecture world, and I started my own business helping people in the architecture world pass a certain exam. I was doing that for several months after I got laid off, and it was doing really well, but I was always feeling in the back of my mind like, “Maybe this isn’t going to be something I’m going to be doing forever,” because it was completely brand new to me. I had done everything right up to the point when I got laid off in terms of my career as an architect, and I still got all that taken away.

I was just so open to that fact that “This isn’t going to be around for a while, or for long,” or “that could absolutely happen.” So I was constantly thinking, “Okay. How can I get back into the workforce? How can I find somebody else I can work for, and just do what I was brought up to do?”

Then, in March of 2009 — this was six, seven months after I had gotten laid off — my boss, the same one who actually let me go, called me up. He said, “Pat, how are you doing? Are you surviving? You’re doing good?” At this point, I was making about $20-30,000 a month from this website.

I was like, “You know? Things have been going pretty okay.” He was like, “Pat, I want to offer you a position.” What happened was that he broke away from the firm that he was at, and he started his own firm. He took a bunch of my friends with him and a bunch of the clients that they had too, and they were starting their own firm, and it just sounded amazing.

The Defining Moment When Pat Learned He Was an Entrepreneur

Pat Flynn: He was like, “Pat, I want you to come work for me again. We’re going to pay you more. We’re going to give you one year’s rent for free and your own office space.” If he had asked me to do this like six months prior, I would have been like, “Uh, yeah,” but it was really interesting because in my head, it only took me five seconds to say, “No thanks. I think I got this.” That was a big moment for me.

The fact that I didn’t even think about that offer was a sign that “You know what? This is my new calling. This is my path. I can never work for somebody else anymore.” This amazing offer was presented to me, and I didn’t even think twice about it. That was that big moment for me.

Jonny Nastor: Did you immediately, at that time, recognize yourself as an entrepreneur?

Pat Flynn: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: I know sometimes this happens later. Somebody calls someone an entrepreneur, and you stop, and you’re like, “Wow, I actually am,” but you’re caught up doing these entrepreneurial things, but you never stopped to make that connection.

Pat Flynn: Right. Yes. I mean, when I got home that evening, I told my wife — who was just my wife for one month at that point — what had happened with the call. I was like, “Yeah. I am an entrepreneur.” It was not only that happening to me, but sharing that with somebody really important to me and her agreeing and being like, “Yes, you are.”

She’s been super supportive the whole way since the day we met, of course. But the day I got laid off, she was always believing in me, and to hear her back me up when I made this big decision instinctively to become an entrepreneur on that day when I got that call, that was confirmation that “Yes, I am an entrepreneur now,” and I could call myself that. I never really called myself an entrepreneur before that point.

Jonny Nastor: Nice. Your wife, your biggest supporter, is probably a huge proponent of why you are so successful, do you think?

Pat Flynn: Absolutely. If I had gotten laid off and went back home and saw her and she had said, “You’ve got to get another job,” that’s what I would have done. But she was just there to let me make a decision on what I wanted to do next and just knew how crushed I was with this event that had happened and getting laid off after doing everything right and going above and beyond what was asked of me in my position. She just knew that it was going to work out in some way. Obviously, she didn’t know how, but the fact that she was there and believing in me and supportive was just amazing.

Then, when I was starting to build my business and things were happening and I would stay up late at night, she was completely understanding that that’s work I had to do to make things work, and she never bugged me. She was never like, “Oh, why don’t we spend more time together?” — none of that stuff. She was always like, “Go do your thing. Just make sure you remember who I am,” joking around about that. I would do that, and then it was incredible.

There were times that she was very supportive in a not-so-nice way, actually. What I mean is that once the business got rolling — and now we’re talking late 2009 — we had just moved into an apartment together. She was pregnant at the time. I remember having conversations with her, and her mouth would be moving, and there would be noise coming out, but I wouldn’t really be focusing on what she was saying because I was just so into the fact that I was an entrepreneur and that I had my own stuff to do. I had another email to answer, and I had another product to create, and all those sorts of things.

They were getting in the way of actual conversations that I was having with my wife. There was one time when we were having a conversation, and she could tell that I was not all there. She said, “You’re thinking about your business right now, aren’t you?” I was like, “Oh, crap.” Then, I thought I was smart. I was like, “No. No,” like a typical guy would, right?

Jonny Nastor: Of course not.

Pat Flynn: Then, of course she goes, “What was the last thing I said?” I’m like, “Crap.” I say, “You said, ‘you’re thinking about your business, aren’t you?'” which didn’t go over very well. Obviously, I didn’t know what she was talking about.

That led to some really important — but also heated and intense — conversations about my life as an entrepreneur and personal life and the fact that we were having this baby, and she didn’t want me to be that dad who was in the corner working all the time or in the office all the time, not being there for the kids 100 percent. It was very, very good to have that conversation because a lot of things came out of that. I had to get a schedule. I didn’t have a schedule. I was just working anytime, and I wasn’t able to check out like we can all check out from a nine-to-five job.

I was checked in all the time, and I just happened to put personal stuff into that time. Now, with the schedule, I was able to check in and check out of both sides and then also have a physical location. That was another big compromise that I had to have in order to help me check in and out of work space and personal space, mentally.

Jonny Nastor: What do you mean by physical location?

Pat Flynn: In the apartment, there was a little cubby hole.

Jonny Nastor: I just saw the video. I just watched it a couple of hours ago.

Pat Flynn: Yes. I mean, I put up a video of my brand new office on SPI TV, episode two.

Jonny Nastor: Yes.

Pat Flynn: I actually showed old footage of my very first office, which was just a little corner of the dining space in this apartment that had my computer and stuff, and all I could do in that spot was work. That was the big mental thing that I had to do: “Okay. If I’m in the spot, I’m working.” My wife knows I’m working, knows not to interrupt, but I know I’m working, too.

Jonny Nastor: I see.

Pat Flynn: When I’m out of that space, when I’m out of that chair, the chair is tucked in — I don’t think the chair could be tucked in because there was so much stuff underneath. When I was away from that space, then I could turn work mode off. I would still cross those lines every once in a while, but it was much, much easier to go in and out of those different spaces mentally having a physical location to do each of those things.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. That’s the video I just watched. You were in your one-bedroom apartment. You were walking up with your dog, and you showed the section. I’m like, “This is amazing that you did this.”

Pat Flynn: Yes. I think the title of the video was ‘The Office of a Six-Figure Entrepreneur’ or something like that.

Jonny Nastor: That’s what it was — like, “I have to see what this is,” because it was outdated. It was old.

Pat Flynn: Right.

Jonny Nastor: I was like, “Wow.” Then, there it is, right in the corner. This is all it takes to run all of this.

Being Relatable, and How This Can Be Good for Your Audience

Pat Flynn: Right. The purpose was that you don’t need a fancy space. You can do stuff as long as you focus on how to provide value to your audience and doing the work. It doesn’t matter where you do work. Now, six years later — it was in 2009 that I created that– I have the home that we purchased and an office space that I customized, and this is helping me become even more optimized. I would have loved to have that back then, but you don’t need it.

Jonny Nastor: You didn’t need it. Yes, exactly. You did everything that you have done from that beginning, and that’s amazing.

To me, if I was to think of one of the things that you are known for and why you are what you are, it’s because you’re so open and full disclosure, and “This is how I do it. This is how it’s been done. This is what works for me, and obviously it’s successful.” You know what I mean? It’s amazing. You’re just … you’re so Pat.

Pat Flynn: Yes.

Jonny Nastor: When I got to meet you, I was just like, “This is the guy I’ve been listening to for years.” It’s literally like just sitting down with you, and it’s amazing. That’s all I ever hear about you: “Pat Flynn is just the most genuine person — if you hear him on a podcast or if you see him on stage or if you sit down with him for coffee. It’s the same guy.”

Pat Flynn: Yeah. I mean, I’m just me.

Jonny Nastor: You are.

Pat Flynn: I just happen to be using the Internet to show more of me. People know me for a lot of different things, and it’s interesting, because at the beginning of every podcast episode that I have for my Smart Passive Income Podcast, I have my voiceover guy who does it in a movie voice. He shares a fun, random little fact about me.

I remember when I first started doing that, people in the podcasting world, who were like my mentors at the time, were like, “Dude, why are you wasting your time, your money, your voiceover guy’s time, and your audience’s time sharing these stupid little facts about yourself?” I was like, “You know what? This is just who I am. I want people to get to know me for me.” Now, 13 million downloads later, these same people are like, “Wow. That was actually a very smart thing to do.”

It’s funny, because whenever I go to conferences, whenever I meet somebody for the first time who has listened to the show, they always mention one of those things that they just seem to connect with. Like if somebody was in a marching band when they were in school, that’s like the first thing they say: “Pat, hey. What’s up? I listen to your show. I was in a marching band,” because that was one of the things I mentioned. Or if anybody is a Back to the Future fan, they know that I’m a huge Back to the Future fan too, and they usually bring that up. Or if they’re Filipino, that’s like the first thing they say, because Filipinos love to connect with other Filipinos, and I mentioned that I’m half Filipino.

There’s so many of those, and even though on the surface, it might not seem like they have anything to do with my business, they actually have everything to do with building a real relationship with people. Therefore, I feel like they actually have everything to do with my business.

Jonny Nastor: Yes, and they absolutely do. You just have this innate ability to do it, I think, and to just be relatable and just be you. It’s amazing. It truly is.

Pat Flynn: Thank you.

Jonny Nastor: I’m not just saying that because you’re here.

Pat Flynn: Thank you.

Jonny Nastor: Okay. In every blog post now, experts are talking about ‘the 80-20,’ right? “Do 20 percent, and you’ll get 80 percent of the results.” “Do what you are good at, and delegate the rest.” At the beginning, you told us what it is you’re good at. Can you now tell us something in your business, Pat, that you are absolutely not good at?

Pat Flynn: I’m not good at sales copy. I’m terrible. I’m not good at selling. I’m actually terrible at it. I think a lot of people could agree with that.

I don’t worry too much about the selling aspect, and I know I could still improve on that. However, I let my results, my own experiments and case studies, my own actions do the selling for me. That’s how I compensate for all of that.

Being open and honest about everything — the wins, the failures, the mistakes, the things that go right — that all helps me sell, and not just sell product, but sell myself as a true, honest human being that people can connect with and build trust with. It’s all helping me.

I know I can improve with that, and it is an important skill to know, and it is something I struggle with when I create sales pages or even titles for blog posts or email subject lines. Those things really hold me up. But I don’t worry too much about it because I know every second I waste is a second that I could potentially be doing something else that’s actually useful.

How Outsourcing Can Help Grow Your Business

Pat Flynn: That’s one thing I’ve been learning recently. This is something that I was terrible at before, but I’m getting much better at now, and that is actually handing off things to people who are also helpful with those things.

For example, I did 134 episodes of the Smart Passive Income Podcast completely on my own — editing, recording, tagging, uploading, show notes, all the visuals that go along with them — everything. Then, it was finally in, I think, episode 134 when I started to outsource the Smart Passive Income Podcast and get comfortable with letting go with some of those things that I know how to do, that I’m good at, and also love to do but maybe, as Chris Ducker says, you’re not really supposed to do as a business owner because there are a lot of other higher-level things that only I can do. And those are the things that I have to do or need to do.

I’ve been getting really good with discovering, “Okay. Where in my business can I outsource and have other people help me that isn’t just something Pat Flynn can do?” and being open and having good people in my team to help me do that. That’s been something that I’m still getting used to.

I still find myself doing the graphic design work for things every once in a while because that’s the world I came from in architecture, and I was a Photoshop expert, so it’s hard for me not to do those things. But I also know that it allows me to do other higher-level thinking and bigger planning type of things.

Jonny Nastor: Yes. Excellent. Do you ever think that maybe you should outsource your sales copy since you don’t like it?

Pat Flynn: That’s an interesting thought.

Jonny Nastor: Because I think you’re awesome at it, obviously. I mean, maybe not like by-the-book copywriting style, but just the openness and the honestness and the fact that it is you. It seems like you are talking to me as I’m reading it, which, I think, is what good copy is. Plus, I mean, you put your new plug-in for sale or something and you sell out immediately. Obviously, your copy works, because it’s based on more than that. Right?

Pat Flynn: Right.

Jonny Nastor: It’s based on more than copy.

Pat Flynn: Yes. I mean, there’s that trust and the authority that I have with people who I’m selling to that is obviously helpful, and can surpass any copy that you write.

Something I struggle with is the idea of continually doing things on my own. Now that I’m getting into the space and I’m more popular, I have all these experts coming at me with different pieces of advice or other people who are making way more in much fancier ways. I’m trying to balance who I am and the way that I got to where I’m at now, versus the other possibilities that are out there and opportunities that may not be in alignment with the way I want to do things.

I know I’m leaving a lot of money on the table, for example. Every single day, I get four or five JV partnership offers for incredible products with a lot of commission, but one thing I always want to make sure is that if I’m going to recommend anything, it’s always something that I’ve used, something I can trust, something that I know I could even support — I know it that well — and that it’s going to treat my audience very well and help them get results. Seven out of seven every single day is a no, so it’s really easy for me to say no. But then I have these people who are multi-millionaires who are like, “Pat, you have the most ravenous fan base in the world. Why don’t you tap into that more?”

Then, I’m like, “No. It doesn’t make me feel good to do that. What do you mean tap into it? Like it’s a well I can just turn on and off? No. These are real people behind here.”

It’s interesting because I’m getting access to a lot of things I never had access to before with how popular I’ve gotten, and it’s a scary thing out there. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of my friends who had their own online businesses, became super successful, and some of those people aren’t my friends anymore because they’ve completely changed their approach. They’re not the same person, or the money has changed them. That’s something I definitely don’t want to happen to me.

Jonny Nastor: Yes. You are like a lifestyle entrepreneur, I guess. Like you are almost more focused on the lifestyle that you want to live, rather than just maximizing every penny that you can possibly make.

Pat Flynn: Yeah.

Jonny Nastor: That’s really interesting. That takes us to, say, projects. You’ve released a new podcast now, the 1-Day Business Breakthrough, and Ask Pat prior to that. You, as I said, started the software with the plug-in. There’s things that you are adding to your business and choosing.

If it’s not a JV partnership, but it’s strictly you, Pat, wanting to do it, how do you decide what is right for you and your business now and something that you should tackle and bring into the mix?

Pat Flynn: It’s always starting with “How can I best serve my audience?” I mean, “What would be the 80-20 of how I can create something that would help the most people, and also, what are the opportunities that are right there in front of me that I could take advantage of as well?”

For instance, with this podcast player at Smartpodcastplayer.com, I had created that player just as a custom build for me, actually, on AskPat.com, my new show, which comes out five days a week. That was the reason why I needed something custom. I didn’t want to have to write a blog post every time I created a new episode, and I wanted a really neat, clean way to serve those things and have people be able to see the catalog of other episodes there easily and share them.

I created this plug-in custom for me. I didn’t code it, but I had somebody on my team code it for me. Then, when I put it on AskPat.com, I started to get a flood of emails from podcasters who were like, “I want that player. I need that. That’s the solution I’ve been looking for this whole time.”

At the beginning, it was just me saying like, “Sorry. It’s mine. I mean, this is a Pat Flynn thing and you can’t have it.” Then, I was like, “Okay. This is silly. People need this. How can we distribute this and turn this into a product where it could be a win for everybody, a win for people because they have the solution, but also because I’m getting paid for it too?”

That’s where the Smart Podcast Player was born. We launched it in beta, and it’s sold out every time we release a new set of licenses. It just came out of beta in January, and it’s doing really well now. I’m really excited about this. That one was just scratching my own itch, and I happened to see that other people have that same itch.

Other times, it’s like, “Okay. What seems to be the biggest issues that people have now, and how can I best solve those problems?” For me, right now — and I don’t think very many people know this — the book I’m writing is based off most of the questions that I’ve been getting on Ask Pat. I get dozens of questions a day from people who want to be featured on Ask Pat. On Ask Pat, I take a question every day, five days a week, and answer one of them, but I’m seeing a lot of themes and issues and problems that people are having when starting their own businesses. A lot of these questions are coming from beginners.

This show has been a great way to not only get more exposure, but also dive into the heads of my audience, too, which is really cool. Then, this book that I’m writing that’s going to hopefully come out or be done at least by the end of this year is going to help those people specifically on how to start and big hurdles that they’re going to come across and how to tackle those things that are going to try and stop them. Then, in addition to that, it’s validating a particular idea — actually putting time and effort into it — to make sure they have the best chance of succeeding with this. That’s what the first book is going to be about.

Based off what my audience is saying, and it’s just really nice that I have Ask Pat as an avenue to be able to tap into the heads of those who are listening.

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. You built the audience, and now you hear what it is they need and how you can serve them best, and then you fulfill them that way.

Pat Flynn: I literally hear what they say.

Jonny Nastor: Okay. Let’s finish up, Pat with some legacy. I know you’re just 32. When you sit and think about where you are and where you’ve come from, it probably blows your mind. When you turned 32, I believe you built two schools in Africa, did you not?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, in Ghana. I did a birthday campaign to raise money to help build a school in Ghana, and if we raised over $25,000, I was going to match that. We were able to do that, so we’re going to build two schools, and they’re being built as we speak. I’m actually headed to Ghana in June to go and visit the schools. I’m taking Caleb, my videographer, along for the ride with me, and we’re going to film the whole thing to share it with everybody who contributed to the campaign.

It’s just so cool. I mean, there’s so many reasons for doing that — wanting to help and expand out of my own space here in California and the U.S., and just try as much as I can to help people on the other side of the world — but also to be an example for other people, too. There were a lot of people who couldn’t contribute to the campaign who had said, for example, “This is something that’s awesome. I’m going to figure out how I can help people in my own community, too.”

Probably the biggest thing for me, personally, is my son. He’s old enough now to see what’s going on. Although he can’t come with me to Ghana because he’s too young, he’s definitely going to watch the videos. The campaign ran for a week, and every day during that week, after I told him what we were doing, he woke up and asked, “How much money do we have today? How much money do I have today?”

He was like, “Oh, we’re so close. Twenty-five thousand!” and he would check every couple of hours to see where we were at. To see him get so excited about the idea of giving is so cool to me, and I’m trying really hard to be a good example as a parent more than anything.

I always envision what my kids will say about my wife and I when we’re older, because this is something my wife and I do now. We talk about our parents and the things that we like, the things we didn’t like. I imagine a conversation between my daughter, who’s two now, and my son, who’s five, when they’re like 30 and 33. They meet together at a café as a quick reunion to have lunch or something, and they’re like, “Remember when Mom and Dad did this?”

I want those conversations to be positive. I want them all to be like, “They did a good job,” as opposed to “Man, they messed up there,” or “They just weren’t around,” or “they didn’t do what was best,” or those types of things. Whenever I come across a decision I have to make in my business as well, I think about that conversation that my son and my daughter have, and I think about what they would think about that, and that has helped guide me along the way.

Jonny Nastor: Pat, it looks like you are on your way for your kids to remember you really well, and thousands of other people out there like myself. Thank you so much for everything that you do. It’s amazing to watch, and it’s inspiring. Thanks so much for taking the time to join me here today.

Pat Flynn: Yes. Thank you for having me.

Jonny Nastor: Did you want to tell people where they can find you and track you down and thank you for sharing on the show?

Pat Flynn: Yes. You can find me at Smartpassiveincome.com, and most of the other things I’m doing are there. You can also hook up with me on Twitter: @PatFlynn. That would be a great place to go and just say “hi,” and I’ll say hi back.

Jonny Nastor: Excellent. I’m going to link to all of that in the show notes for everyone, and make sure you stop by Twitter and say hi to Pat for us.

Pat Flynn: Thanks, Jonny.

Jonny Nastor: Thank you so much, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Appreciate it.

Jonny Nastor: Pat, thank you. That was a lot of fun, and I sincerely thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with me today.

Pat is somebody all of us I know, myself included, can learn so much from, and I thank him for taking the time.

We only chatted for about 25 minutes, and Pat said a lot of smart things. He did. He said a lot of smart things, but he said one thing, didn’t he? He did. Did you get it? Did you hear it? Let’s do it. Let’s find the hack.

Pat Flynn: I mean, I’m just me. I’m just me. I just happen to be using the Internet to show more of me, and people know me for a lot of different things. It’s interesting because at the beginning of every podcast episode that I have for my Smart Passive Income Podcast, I have my voiceover guy who does it in like a movie voice.

He shares a fun, random little fact about me. I remember when I first started doing that, people in the podcasting world, who were like my mentors at the time, were like, “Dude, why are you wasting your time, your money, your voiceover guy’s time, and your audience’s time sharing these stupid little facts about yourself?” I was like, “You know what? This is just who I am. I want people to get to know me for me.” Now, like 13 million downloads later, these same people are like, “Wow. That was actually a very smart thing to do.”

Jonny Nastor: And that’s the hack.

Pat, thank you so much. I guess this one is personal, and it hits home to me, and I think it’s really, really important. If you’re out there trying to create content, trying to build your platform and build authority in your marketplace, it’s very essential to take it to a good level. You really have to be able to open up. You have to be able to be yourself, and Pat is amazing at that.

I get emails almost daily, and I love it. It’s amazing. So many times, they tell me that they like the show, that it’s great, that it does all these amazing things for them, that it helps them through working through stuff in their head — amazing. So many of them tie back to me saying, “My name is Jon Nastor, but you can call me Jonny.” That came from Pat Flynn.

I have to fully disclose that. I was sitting with him almost a year ago, and I was going through this stuff. We were sitting down and I was like, “I need to create a show.” I had no idea about Hack the Entrepreneur. I didn’t know what it was going to be at this time, and I was literally stuck on this: “Should I go for like the Jonny Nastor and the whole thing and trying to be like that me more personal, or just a Jon?” But the Jon can get lost. There are so many Jon’s around.

It’s funny. Of course, I’m just procrastinating at this point. Now, when I think back on it, it was just like “Jon, just get started. Do something.” And then Pat was just like, “What if you say ‘My name is Jon Nastor, but you can call me Jonny’?” I was like, “That’s … I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d like that. It was really weird for me.” Then I got used to it. The more I said it, the more I got used to it, and it makes me super relatable, and it’s amazing. He has this knack.

If you are looking to build this platform or get your voice heard, Pat is somebody you should listen to. Check out a show if you haven’t, which you probably have because there’s 13 million downloads already, and even his blog. He does videos. He really opens up and has a natural tendency to be himself. I was in an argument with somebody the other day, and they were saying, “Everybody, just be yourself … blah, blah, blah.” They were saying how easy it is.

I was trying to say that I don’t think it is that easy to be yourself. It’s really hard. It’s hard to find your voice, especially when you’re podcasting, when you’re doing things like this, and you’re exposing yourself to a wide audience. It’s almost easier to adapt and be like people you’ve seen or heard before. I think you have to struggle through that until you do find your own voice.

People keep telling me, “Jon, you just sound like you. You’re you,” and I didn’t always. I mean, I’ve been podcasting now for a couple of years, and I didn’t always have this. It’s something you really have to work out, and Pat was amazing at helping me do that. Also, just listening to him and learning from what he does — rather than what he says to do — is amazing and has been super helpful to me, so I had to pick that for the hack. Thank you so much, Pat.

Have you checked out the new site? It is on the Rainmaker Platform, which is amazing. Check out the site, Hte.io. It’s even easier. Unless you really want to type it all out: Hacktheentrepreneur.com. They go to the same place, but Hte.io will take you straight there, and get on my email list. I send it out once a week every Sunday. I would love to have you there.

Also, downloads have skyrocketed. It’s amazing how many of you are out there. I am so thrilled, but if you could take two minutes and visit Hacktheentrepreneur.com/itunes, or if you’re on your phone right now, open up that podcast app that’s in there. Look for Hack the Entrepreneur, or you’re probably actually listening to it right now, and leave me a rating and a review. It literally will take you three minutes and 14 seconds, and it’ll help the show so much. It will move me up the rankings, and Pat’s always out there holding on to the number one spot. I at least need to get closer to him. Come on. Just help me do this.

Thank you so much for taking the time to join me. I truly do appreciate it. It’s been a lot of fun, and I will talk to you next time. Until next time, please keep hacking the entrepreneur.

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